Koha Question of the Week: How Does RDA work in Koha?

by Kelly McElligott on Feb 4, 2022

Each Friday, we will bring you a new Koha Question of the Week. We will select real questions that we receive and share the answers with you!

Question: How does RDA work in Koha?

Answer: Let's answer the big question, what is it? RDA stands for Resource Description and Access. It is the new cataloging standard based on FRBR concepts that the Library of Congress has planned to fully implement RDA.

Koha loves that librarian's catalog all the details and gives all the functionality to do the cataloging! Koha also loves to show off ALL the things you catalog and it will not judge your records! If a library chooses to use the 336,337,338 fields to represent the RDA cataloging standard, Koha will ingest this information, store it and display it.

If your library is just starting to adopt these cataloging standards and would like to edit your frameworks to display/edit these specific fields, please submit a ticket and we would be happy to assist.

If you would like to edit the frameworks yourself, see this tutorial video on editing frameworks:

Video Tutorial on Editing Frameworks in Koha

Advanced Cataloging Editor

If your library is using the Advanced Cataloging Editor, you can create Macros to store the default values for the 336,337,338 - which makes it super easy!

Here are some helpful tutorials on using Marcos in Koha:

Setting up MACROS in the Advanced Editor in Koha

Save and Share Your Advanced Catalog Editor Macros

Questions?

Don't forget, while cataloging, if you ever have a question about the structure of a field in the cataloging module there are little ? next to each field. Clicking on one of these will bring up a new tab linking the librarian to the Library of Congress cataloging assistance and clarification.